


Five Things Sam Wishes Jack Had Never Said in Bed

by Paian



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: 1000-3000 words, 5 Things, Angst, Character Study, Established Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-23
Updated: 2007-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-02 17:53:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paian/pseuds/Paian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief, achey study of how things might go if Sam and Jack did get together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things Sam Wishes Jack Had Never Said in Bed

_1\. Neon shines through smoky eyes tonight_

"Samantha."

She's never heard that name in his voice, seen that name on his lips. The only time to her knowledge that he even referred to her by her full given name was when he was coming down with a virus that turned him into a Neandertal and her into a sexual prize. It's bizarre and discomfiting for him to do it now. For him to do it in bed.

Her full given name is a compromise her parents made, her mother sugar-coating the fact that her father wanted two boys roughhousing out in the yard with him the rare weekends he was home, not one boy who barely knew him and resented him when he was there and a girl with her nose stuck in her books to avoid the whole issue. "Samantha" is like her service number; it's an eight-letter designation that identifies her on official documents. "Sam" is _her_, brains and motorcycles and sexy clothes and combat experience and cookie-baking and all.

"Samantha" romanticizes her. "Samantha" feminizes her. In her experience, the men who called her "Samantha" were men who idealized her. Men who did superficially flattering but fundamentally creepy things like program a home computer interface with her voice. Men who believed they were falling in love with her when they barely knew her at all, when they were falling in love with a construct, someone wiser than she was, more girlish than she was, more graceful, more ... fragile, like a glass statue on a shelf. Men who called her that to honor her or establish their special intimacy with her and only gave themselves the distance of worshippers. She doesn't exist to be admired and cherished and protected. She's learned not to trust in the love of men who call her Samantha. And she'd waited so long for him to start calling her Sam again.

In reply, she murmurs, "Yes, Jonathan?" She does it with a smile, to pull the teetering moment back to something fun, make it a joke they can share in the cuddling afterglow, and while the syllables are coming out of her mouth she feels wickedly clever for her riposte, pleased with herself for recovering fast from an unpleasant surprise and coming up with an insta-fix; she's never been as quick with the one-liners as the rest of them, and this is a pretty good one. But he doesn't get it. He only looks confused, even slightly hurt, as though she's thrown a bouquet of flowers back in his face.

And the truth is that she was always half in love with _his_ full given name -- held it inside like a private secret, as close and unspoken as her own impossible longing -- and when she hears it echo back to her, it sounds different, as though the naked air has oxidized it, made something pure into something ordinary. Some things should just never be said in your outside voice.

_2\. Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker_

"Oh yeah, fuck yeah, fuck me."

She can't help it; deep down, way deep down in the parts of her the military never touches, the parts of her she shouldn't have to guard when she's with him, she's a prude. She's uncomfortable with male nudity in inappropriate situations, whether it's a scientist stranded offworld for so long his clothes have disintegrated or a friend returned to corporeal form after a confrontation with the Ascended. She's a hearts-and-flowers girl, candy-and-candlelight. Profanity's fine on the job and when it's warranted she uses it herself, but it doesn't stimulate her libido. When he says what he says, it's only a hoarse whisper, and it should be intensely hot, but it actually paralyzes her a little -- part shock, because he never verbalized during sex before and because she'd maintained this illusion that he was a gentleman right down to the unknowable thoughts in his head, and part switch-flipping-off. It's OK, she thinks when it happens, it's not a big deal, it's a glimpse into his psyche and how often does she get those? But later on she can't help chewing it over, working it like a loose tooth, and she knows it's not OK. He didn't say it in the throes of passion and he didn't say it to turn her on; he said it to make himself come. It worked, and at the time she was relieved, because there was no way she was going to and the last time he tried to wait her out he went soft and everybody ended up frustrated and at that point she just wanted him to come already, finish it, she was tired and getting sore and she'd let him down again by failing to orgasm and it needed to be over, and he whispered that and then it was. But he whispered it to himself. Because he was having trouble getting off. Because it was an extra stimulation he needed to push himself over the edge. Probably she wasn't even supposed to hear it. She pretends she didn't, and that's even less OK.

_3\. In absentia veritas_

"We should get Teal'c and Daniel to come over for dinner sometime."

It feels as if he's talking about starting team nights up again when they'd never done those to begin with, that was Mitchell's SG-1 and Mitchell's SG-1 was two SG-1s ago, SG-1 is Cassie and Nyan and Hailey and Grogan now. Hearing him say their old teammates' names while they're lying in the privacy of their bed lights up some invisible thing that's been impinging on the edges of her vision, intentionally disregarded but worrisome in an I'm-not-thinking-about-this way: that they aren't enough for each other; that they're only half of themselves, without the team around them.

Daniel's on a yearlong deployment to the Furling home galaxy and Teal'c is on Dakara heading the Free Jaffa Council. Even when they were all in the same galaxy, the year after they defeated the Ori, weeks could go by before their schedules put them in the same room at the same time. This is a hypothetical dinner, a get-together that can't happen for months if it ever does. It's so far in the future and so unlikely, at this point, that it shouldn't bother her that he's musing on it. It's a little daydream about a casual, one-of-these-days reunion. But he's musing on it _in bed_. They don't talk about work in bed, they don't chat amiably about their respective days. Maybe if they did it wouldn't seem so weird. But on the odd nights when they actually hit the sack at the same time, they make love and fall wordlessly to sleep. She doesn't tuck in close against him reading or working, he doesn't finish the crossword and roll toward her and bury his face in her shoulder to keep the light out of his eyes, they don't watch TV. They don't _talk_ \-- and the first foray he makes into changing that ... well, maybe he's making an effort, trying for a little conversation with his foreplay instead of just going for it the way he usually does, and maybe he thinks it's a safe subject, their oldest shared friends, or maybe it's an understandable misstep, she sucks at small talk just as much as he does, she always figured their mutual awkwardness with communication was an ironic sort of bond, even sort of cute, and of all people she should be the first to forgive the insertion of a foot into a mouth ...

But the fact remains that he said it between kisses while initiating their customary sex-before-sleep, and she really wishes the first thing that came to his mind and out of his mouth didn't amount to _I miss the team_.

_4\. For me and my gal_

"I make a really crappy husband."

Did she _ask_? Did she give the _first indication_ that the white picket fence was a thing she wanted, much less assumed they'd ever have? Nothing's changed except that they've both resigned their commissions; they're still working in the program with the same level of clearance and authority, they've only separated from the military on paper, and she never asked him for that, either, she made her own choice and he made his, and in their line of work there shouldn't be assumptions about the future to trip them up in the present -- and how can he _not get_ that she left the cozy-cottage and two-point-three-children dreams on that bench where she broke it off with Pete? Worse, the statement heralds a long unburdening, all the things she _has_ wondered about, _has_ wanted to know (cursing her curiosity all the while and calling it nosiness, prurient interest) -- but never wanted to hear when they were lying in _bed_. For so long she yearned for him to open up to her emotionally, and when he does she just feels ... sorry for him. Sorry to find out what he really thinks of himself, how invested he is in his own self-recrimination -- that inside him somewhere might be the steady, quiet, attractively vulnerable man she's fantasized about but what he chooses to show her, or can't stop himself from showing her once the bottle's uncorked, looks a lot more like self-pity.

_5\. The dog that didn't bark in the night_

"I love you."

He says it a lot in bed, and only in bed. You'd think that would make it more intimate, passionate, romantic, intense, something, but it doesn't. He says it a minute or two after he comes, and usually only if he's gotten her to come (which is less often, lately, and takes more work, and she doesn't want to think about that, how the cuddly afterglow has slowly transformed into a tacit performance review, and she's not even sure of whose performance). It doesn't mean what it's supposed to mean. It means "That went well." It means "I love this." It means "I feel great and I'm high on endorphins and oxytocin and orgasms were had by all and my work here is done." She read once, in some magazine she was leafing through at the dentist's office, that men need to make love to feel love and women need to feel love to make love. At the time she thought that was a simplistic crock. Now the idea of it itches at her, worries her. The empirical data are adding up to an answer she doesn't want to get. He tells her he loves her when they've had what he considers to be good sex. He shows he loves her when they're saving the galaxy or someone important to her has just died or she's been through an ordeal. But those are very different kinds of love, and there's a kind in the middle somewhere that they're only getting farther away from the closer they seem to get. It's a paradox she can't resolve.


End file.
